IN MY GARDEN
By Barbara Janelle M.A.
As I was taking a basket of trimmings to the compost pile the other day, an euryops bush stopped me and asked me to sit with it a while. I set my garden stool down and sat to admire the yellow daisy-like flowers. The bush said, “We are so grateful for your caring” and filled me with feelings of joy and connection that far surpassed those simple words.
When my husband and I moved to southern California two years ago we found a wonderful house with a large backyard. The barrenness of the yard – ivy, grass, 3 orange trees, 2 apricot trees, and baked clay – overwhelmed me. I wanted flowers, color and life here. I bought manure and started digging it in – hard work in baked clay! I dug and planted beds.
I placed my Genesa Crystal in the center of the yard to support the process of energizing and clearing the space. At my local organic nursery, I found a bag of Steiner’s Biodynamic mixture. I had heard of this and knew that it worked energetically to support life. I sprinkled it all over the yard, front and back, as a dedication to increasing life and diversity in the garden. Within 24 hours, the light in the yard had brightened enormously.
My husband dug out the ivy along the back fence – 80 feet X 8 feet – doing a 10’ X 8’ piece every week. There was not a single earthworm in this area! I asked the ivy why it seemed so dull, so lifeless. It said that humans planted it and then forgot it. It needed attention to shine.
ATTENTION INCREASES LIGHT
Two years ago in a basic level Animal Communication course, I asked the participants to go outdoors and notice what caught their attention. They were then to see the beauty in it. This heart-felt attention is a bridge to communication. Sue Becker from Ontario told me that when she admired the tulips they got brighter.
In my garden, the area that I have worked on that morning is very bright. Last summer I trained a teen-age girl to weed and deadhead the flowers while I was away for a few weeks. We worked together on a portion of a large bed and then walked to the compost pile. I had her turn and look at the quality of light in the area we had just worked. She said in amazement, “It is so bright – so much brighter than the areas on either side!”
I’ve asked friends to look at the garden and tell me where I worked that morning. It is easy to see when they look at the quality of light. I can tell the parts of the garden that need attention by the dullness of the light there. If I cannot work immediately, I go and admire a plant there and the light in the area increases. The garden is brighter after visitors have walked through it, pausing to admire plants.
Houseplants brighten when they are worked with and admired. This is easy to demonstrate as I did in a recent lecture. I asked people to notice the quality of light in a large fern, and then I spent several minutes straightening the fronds and admiring its color and shape. When I asked the audience what they noticed about the light, many spoke of an increase in brightness and greenness. In a show of hands, about 100 of the 130 people there saw the brightness if the plant increase.
Over these months and years, I have dug a lot of manure and compost into the soil and attended to my plants. The garden shines. Birds and butterflies and earthworms abound. It is a far different place than it was when we first arrived.
MIRACLES HAPPEN
In The Celestine Prophesy (1), James Redfield wrote about the brightening and energizing that loving attention brings. We can consciously energize people, plants, animals and even situations by attending to them – seeing, hearing, focusing on the beauty and on the positive possibility in all. And when we see the beauty in others and in the world around us, we not only act as a conduit for energy to go to them, we are energized too. As in my garden, miracles can happen as a result.
Note
(1) James, Redfield, The Celestine Prophesy, Satori Press, Hoover, AL, 1993